<nettime> Gosia Fraser, comment on the WIRED article about Palantir's employees' blues after the 'Karp Manifesto'

[Patrice Riemens via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Goodday,

The WIRED piece, if you have xs, you can read here:

https://www.wired.com/story/palantir-employees-are-starting-to-wonder-if-theyre-the-bad-guys/

From FB (fwded):

https://www.facebook.com/beingliberal.org/posts/pfbid05SQWpBbQWqHDSeL8jTpLMtzSfP7CB8xzvvseVXipeKPA3Ejjb5Jhrev2ZxJnSc9Dl

In 𝙒𝙞𝙧𝙚𝙙, I'm reading a piece about employees at 𝗣𝗮𝗹𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗿 — a company that recently published, and there's no other way to put it, a technofascist manifesto. Workers are waking up to who they're actually working for, and beginning to grasp that their values have nothing in common with technofascism.
𝘞𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘥 describes how they're exchanging careful but plainly worded doubts about the direction of a company run by Alexander Karp and co-founded by Peter Thiel — two men who fit the exaggerated, previously-only-fictional Bond-villain archetype of the obscenely rich megalomaniac whose deranged ambitions could end civilization.
For more than two decades, those doubts were largely absent. Until now — when Palantir's tools being used by Trump's human-rights-violating agencies, and deployed in strikes on Iran that killed children, finally started generating pushback. Better late than never, I suppose.
The entanglement of tech companies with authoritarian power isn't new. You can visit the Gross-Rosen concentration camp — far less known than Auschwitz — and see the barracks where prisoners performed forced labor manufacturing components for companies including Siemens.
Working in tech is no longer just about good pay and the social status that lets you — especially in developing or aspirational economies — claim membership in the middle class. Working in tech is now a moral question. As I said in my last episode: Big Tech's ties to the military are stronger than they've ever been, and the entire sector is militarizing. And with it, more and more aspects of the world we live in.
A few years ago, landing a job with a Silicon Valley giant was something people admired — or at minimum, envied. But today, being employed by companies that supply tools like Palantir's, that enable technofascism, that work against freedom — that is increasingly a declaration of allegiance. There's no room left for "we had no idea." Those days are over. — @Gosia Fraser
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